THE GISTGreen Flash will officially open its Virginia Beach brewery to the public this November with a weekend long lineup of festivities. Capable of producing 100,000 barrels annually, the new facility will serve as the San Diego stalwart’s east coast headquarters.

WHY IT MATTERSFor Green Flash, the occasion is more than a mere benchmark—though it's also that, too, and a momentous one. Rather, at front of mind for a brewery of Green Flash’s size, Virginia Beach represents practicality. When up and running, the facility will be responsible for brewing beer for the company’s east coast markets. Atlantic-facing beer drinkers, as a result, can look forward to finding fresher beer at a more affordable price. (Win-win!) This is especially important for Green Flash, as the company is one of the few craft breweries that distributes in all 50 states.

Which brings us here. Among the 50 largest craft breweries in the country, a not insignificant number of them either already operate, or are in the process of building out, second facilities. Some have stayed close to home in doing so (Victory), while others have uprooted to nest closer to important markets across the country (Stone, Lagunitas, Sierra Nevada, Oskar Blues, Deschutes, New Belgium, etc.). Large craft breweries are pouring millions into second homes. And individual state governments are doing tax-break somersaults and legislative cartwheels that would make Simone Biles blush to lure them in.

As a bonus, that trend also leaves room for an interesting conversation about locality, which has been championed, from the bigwigs at the Brewers Association on down to whoever occupies the barstool nearest you, as a defining characteristic of quote-unquote “craft beer.” Can a brewery from San Diego truly be local to Virginia Beach? It’s a question that fundamentally betrays the edict of “Quality Above All Else,” but it’s also the fruit that inevitably bears when we talk about beer beyond its liquid state. But we’ll save that evolving conversation for another day.